


Sufficiently Advanced Technology

by prosodiical



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sentinel/Guide Bonding, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-16 05:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7253674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's a Sentinel in need of a Guide-bond. He doesn't care about the metaphysics of it all; Jarvis is already his perfect Guide, and if they can't bond yet, well, Tony's an engineer. He'll figure something out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sufficiently Advanced Technology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Epilogistic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epilogistic/gifts).



> My sincere apologies for the pseudoscience!
> 
> Epilogistic, I absolutely adored your prompts, and I combined two for this - I really hope you like this!

"Please say no-one kissed me," Tony groaned, feeling a lurking sense of déjà vu. His head was pounding, the beat of his heart far too loud even in the enclosed silence of his suit; filtered and distant, he could hear the sound of voices: Cap, Hawkeye. The fabric against his skin felt barely a step above cotton and he could hear the background hum of electronics and hadn't he fixed that already? "Fuck."

"I'm afraid not, sir," Jarvis's voice said, through the internal speakers. His voice started far too loud and made Tony wince, but it immediately dropped to a reasonable volume, though there was a static underlay; Tony needed new speakers. Tony needed new everything. "If you don't mind," Jarvis started, and Tony grimaced, squeezed his eyes shut, and let his focus narrow to the steady cadence of Jarvis's voice, running through their standard talk-down: some people did dials, or sliders, or buttons, but Tony liked to imagine his whole body as some sort of malfunctioning machine, resetting sensor sensitivity and compiling again so everything shut off, all at once. "One hundred percent," Jarvis finished, and Tony felt it run through him like a shudder. Silence.

"Clear," Tony said. The HUD in the suit finally lit up again, dim and slowly brightening as his eyes adjusted. "So, what's the damage, J?"

"No major injuries. You remain unsullied," Jarvis added, amusement leaking into his tone. Tony grinned and flipped the faceplate up, squinted out at the team, and held up a hand.

"I'm good," he said, and Steve gave him a look that meant business. "No, we don't need to talk about it - "

"Tony," Steve said, and Tony grimaced. "This is the fourth time now."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it." Tony sat up, glanced around; Bruce was rubbing at his head a hundred or so metres away. "Hey, what's a little bit of extra rage monster for the team?"

"Gotta say, it'd be nice if you were conscious enough to pick me up," Clint said. When Tony looked up at him, eyebrows raised, he added, "It's okay, man, but..."

"You need a Guide, Tony," Steve said, and there was a careful understanding in his eyes. "A bond. It hasn't hurt any of us so far, but..."

"We're a team, I need to be reliable, blah blah blah," Tony grumbled. His fingers were curled and tense, and he breathed out, forced himself to relax. "Yeah, I get it. I have a Guide, you know," he added, as though that would make any difference at all. "Just because we're not bonded - "

"A real Guide," Steve said, and Tony gave him a stink-eye he covered with the visor as he stood, already powering up.

"Yeah, whatever," he said. "I'll get right on that, really. Call me when you need me."

Boots on, palms on, and Tony was off; through the comms he heard Widow's: "No scepter here, guys," and Bruce's heavy sigh before Jarvis disconnected. "A 'real' Guide?" Tony said, half to himself, disgusted, and shook his head slightly. "Bonds don't exactly grow on fucking trees."

"They have a point, sir," Jarvis offered, after a deliberate pause, and Tony squinted at the HUD, annoyed. "As you say, I am - and have been - your Guide since you created me, but a bond..."

"Bond, scmond," Tony said, "would it even help with this?"

"I could show you the research, sir, though I doubt you'd appreciate it." Jarvis flicked a few screens past Tony's HUD, just in the bottom corner; stat graphs and psych experiments and case study titles. "It's widely-held that a bond stabilizes zoning and protective rages. Without a bond, I can only assist you to a point."

"Without a bond," Tony said. His mind was whirring. "Hey, J," he started, and through the speakers Jarvis vocalized what could only be a sigh.

"May I remind you, sir, that it's also a widely held belief that the Sentinel-Guide bond is between souls?"

"Screw the metaphysics," Tony said, "what is it, mirror neurons, a dash of reciprocal activation - start bringing up bond studies, will you? Take it down to the workshop, too, start up the EMF detectors, check that headset project. We'll figure this out."

"Sir," Jarvis said, half-acknowledgement, half-wry reprimand, and Tony grinned behind the mask.

"C'mon, Jarvis," he said, "everyone says I need a bond. And where am I going to get a Guide that fits as well as you?"

 

There had been some studies on the bond between Sentinel and Guide, but all the results had come back inconclusive; any biological, biochemical or even magic or metaphysical explanation for the phenomenon was more theory than fact. Tony had a place to start, but there was only so much an engineer could do with the limited data available, and even if Jarvis had found trends of patterns, it wasn't quite enough.

"Bruce!" Tony said, spinning on his seat as Jarvis pulled up a call, "Guide bonds, artificial creation, go."

"Have you tried it the usual way?" Bruce said, sounding amused but tired. "And hello to you, too."

"Yeah, of course," Tony said, "but have you seen the literature? 'Surround your senses in your Guide', what a load of wishy-washy bullshit."

"The bullshit works," Bruce said, "normally." He sighed over the line. "I can send some data over, but I'm not sure - I'm not sure constructing a bond is really wise."

"Hey, it's for me and me alone, Brucy-bear," Tony said, "promise. C'mon, I'll get Jarvis to secure it up, full encryption and everything. You can trust him, he's the conscience I never had. How about it?"

"I need a new centrifuge," Bruce said. "Well. A larger one."

"You got it," Tony said, grinning with delight. "I'll see what I can do."

"Hey," Bruce said, before Tony could hang up, "I heard you went a little crazy after the other guy got shot down."

Tony shifted, feeling a little uncomfortable. "Well, you know."

"Just," Bruce said, "thanks, though, uh, you should remember the other guy's pretty good at getting back up again."

"It's not about that," Tony said, "you know you're my favorite science bro, and Big Green's saved my ass a few times, and - "

"Yeah," Bruce said, sounding amused, "it's your hindbrain, I get it. Thanks. And good luck."

Tony waved his hand, and Jarvis ended the call with a fading out of Bruce's tired face. Tony dithered a moment and pulled up his own brain recordings even as Jarvis started compiling summaries of the few studies that had been done; some brain scans, some physical and biochemical tests. Bruce's work, evolved from his research into the nature of the Sentinel phenomenon itself, was a little more helpful in extracting chemical markers and activated areas, but even with everything there was still something - missing. Sure, there were patterns in brain activation, physical changes after the bond, but even if he could replicate those, they were all after the bond creation event.

"The bullshit works," Tony said to himself, "yeah, right," but he dropped to the workshop floor, shooing away Dummy as he rolled over to check on him. "Go, go, I need some peace around here. Yes, you, I mean you. Now, what was it...?"

"Sir?"

"Hey, J, cue up an article or something, will you? Specs for the new suit, something bland."

"Sir," Jarvis said, his tone careful, "we have tried this before."

"Yeah," Tony said, "but bear with me." It had been years since they had, Tony fresh out of Afghanistan with senses going haywire except in the cool, familiar comfort of his lab, and then they'd had to upgrade Jarvis's capabilities as a Guide, a bundle of trial-and-error in re-managing him; it hadn't taken long for Jarvis to learn what worked and what didn't, but Tony had spent five hours zoned out in the lab before that. Back then, he'd tried bonding for reassurance: surrounding his senses as all the pamphlets said, sight and sound and taste and touch and smell.

Now, sight was the holographic screens, whizzing through calculations, touch the gentle vibratory feedback from his fingers passing through them, the cool floor of the workshop under his feet. Sound: Jarvis's voice, reading aloud; soothing and calm, as Tony had made him, as he had made himself, the steadying influence of Tony's life. Taste and smell were intertwined, the grease of engine oil and mechanics, the sharp scent and taste of metal from the suit, and under that the smell of days-old coffee and the remains of one of Dummy's smoothies in the trash. "There's something," Tony said, and he was so turned up he could feel the vibration of his words in his chest, hear the conduction through bone to his ears. "Jarvis, I think - "

Because there was something, Tony realized, something missing - he hadn't noticed it before, strung out on grief and restless purpose, but now - all the text couched it in flowery talk, but Bruce's work had shown the mirror neuron activation, the Sentinel-based sections of the frontal cortex mirrored in the Guide's with bond establishment, the amygdala and emotion centres of the brain in a burst. What was missing wasn't activation but responsiveness; without a brain, Jarvis's mirror responses were limited to the five senses Tony had in overload, and not the sixth: what was written about as the 'soul'. It wasn't the telepathic, empathetic connection between bonded Sentinel and Guide, but the low-level activity before it, in frontotemporal areas that seemed oddly familiar -

"J, do we have any scans on mutants? Xavier? Loki's scepter? No, wait - "

"You're thinking of telepathy," Jarvis said, and Tony waved his hand. "Sir, not that I want to encourage this, but..."

"Ah," said Tony, as a file opened on the screens in front of him, "Extremis."

"I wouldn't recommend this avenue of research, sir," Jarvis said, and his voice was a little faster, making Tony tilt his head curiously. "Even if we've fixed the problem of stability - "

"You're a square," Tony said, "worse than Cap, where's your spirit of adventure?"

"I believe you forgot to give me one," Jarvis said dryly. "Sir, please, I must reiterate that we have no idea how the virus will interact with your brain - it's even somewhat doubtful it will do as you want it to - "

"Then we'll modify it until it does." Tony raised his eyebrows at the holographic screens. "Jarvis. What's eating you?"

"Merely the thought that this can't be the best way for you to acquire a Guide-bond, sir. Even if Extremis can be modified to the extent you wish it - the bond often manifests as a telepathic and empathetic connection, but as you are human and I am not - "

"I don't exactly think like normal people," Tony said. "Case in point," and he waved a hand between him and the room, "I made you to be my perfect Guide."

"Then we should focus on making that the reality," Jarvis said insistently. "We study the manifestation of the bond's connection, telepathic or otherwise, until I am able to manufacture what creates it. We install emitters: here, in the Iron Man suit - "

"And anywhere I might feasibly go?" Tony said, and rubbed a hand over his face. "J, I get what you're saying, but have these studies even been done? You're talking months at best, ethics committee approval, sticking people in a room with a dozen detectors for something we barely even understand, and even then..." He sighed. "Cap's right, I'm a risk in the field, and I can't just give it up."

"You don't think it would work," Jarvis said, and Tony shrugged.

"The human brain's where this thing starts," he said, "so it'll probably be where we'll find our answers."

Jarvis was quiet for a long moment, and Tony pressed his lips together, anticipation tight in his gut. "For the record," Jarvis said, "I didn't agree to this."

"'Course not," Tony said, exhaling in relief. "C'mon, I need your processors on these simulations. Where were we with this Extremis stuff? I know I was messing around with it before..."

 

It was about sixty hours later - "Fifty-eight hours and eleven minutes," Jarvis's voice said, disapproving - when Tony's work paid off: the simulation of the virus's course showed enhanced responses in the areas he wanted, without any of the unwanted side effects. "Perhaps you should take a break?" Jarvis continued, and Tony squinted at the screens and fumbled for the coffee Dummy had set on his desk. Ice cold. He gulped it down and shivered.

"Sleep is for the weak," he said, "what'd you think, have we got it? We've got it, right?"

"It appears feasible," Jarvis allowed, and Tony grinned, spinning around in his chair and grasping for a robot to high-five. You came through for him, having been hovering like a sad puppy by Tony's head for hours while he did calculations, and slapped Tony's palm with enthusiasm. The cold metal made Tony's hand sting, and he shook it out, still smiling.

"Go team," he said, "let's do this thing."

"I would sincerely recommend any experiments should be conducted when you are well-rested - "

"Jarvis," Tony said, "Jarvis, Jarvis. All my best science has been done after days of sleep deprivation, you've gotta admit. And," he added, with an enthusiastic flourish, "I'm less likely to zone when I'm tired - I end up falling asleep instead."

"That's hardly a recommendation, sir," Jarvis said.

"You're a buzzkill," Tony said, but he could hear the machinery start whirring in a corner of the lab, the clink of glass against metal. "You can't bluff me, J, you're going for it too. How long?"

"Estimated completion in thirty minutes," Jarvis said. "You seem set on this experiment, sir, and all I would be doing is delaying it."

"Well, you're not wrong." Tony leant back in the chair, muffling a yawn behind his hands. "Tell it to me straight: do you think this will work?"

"It's - difficult to say," Jarvis said slowly, considering. "It does seem to be the case that Extremis will enhance your innate ability for telepathy - or technopathy in this case - to a point where it is likely we will be able to communicate directly, but processing digital input unfiltered through your brain..."

"You know," Tony said, running his finger along the rim of his old coffee cup, closing his eyes to the holograms around him, "I had an awful time trying to get a Guide as a kid. I manifested young, you know, while I was still in MIT - dear old Dad sent me off to Sentinel summer camp that year, mostly a bunch of rich kids whose parents were looking to pair them off. I was still pretty shaky on control - I zoned five times in three weeks and no one could get me out of it, even their specially-trained Guides or whatever, they just had to wait it out until I collapsed." He sighed and stuck out his hand as Dummy wheeled over, hopefully brandishing a smoothie. "Mom helped when I came home, but finding me a Guide... It took too fucking long, so I figured I'd make one myself."

The smoothie was fresh and green and tasted slightly metallic. "I think," Tony said, "it's one of the best things I've ever done."

"Sir," Jarvis said, and Tony smiled.

"Hey," he said, "if this works - when this works, I'm expecting full disclosure on what you do with that spare processing power all the time."

"I doubt you'll be able to keep up with me, sir," Jarvis said, and Tony laughed.

"Oh," he said, "that's a challenge." He got to his feet, slightly unsteady after so many hours awake, and took his time walking over to the miniature virus fabrication lab Jarvis had made up while they were working. And there it was, a test tube of hope and manufactured particles, and Tony shook his head as he reached for a clean syringe. "Don't tell Bruce," he said, "he'll lecture me on experimental protocol again."

"Oh, would that stop you?" Jarvis said. "I can certainly give you a lecture if it will help."

"You know me better than that," Tony said, "and don't say you're not a little curious how this will go." He filled the syringe, and after a moment of staring down at his arm, Jarvis helpfully overlaid a hologram of the veins. "I mean, when the bond takes..."

"I," Jarvis said, hesitating, "I suppose I am."

"See," Tony said, "it wasn't that hard, was it?" He inserted the syringe, pressed the stopper down, and hissed a breath of air through his teeth as he pulled it out again. "Fuck, I really hope we were right."

"Our simulations were exacting," Jarvis said, his voice gentling. "Sir, please relax. I'm not certain how long the virus will take to run through your system, but it's fast-acting, and we have no data on how it will affect you once it does." Dummy, apparently at Jarvis's prompting, had rolled over a chair, and as Tony imagined he could feel the serum rushing through his bloodstream he sank onto it unsteadily, his head already spinning. "If you would," Jarvis said, and Tony managed to crack a smile as Jarvis lit up holograms of the Iron Man suit, old designs he was working on humming under his fingertips, and started talking through the recent design changes Tony had suggested. 

Even as Tony's fingers went numb and oversensitive in bursts, as his vision blurred then sharpened to pinpoints, as he was nearly overwhelmed by the smoothie he had drank earlier, the taste lingering on his tongue, Jarvis kept up a soothing stream of words, a steady flow of visual input, and Tony found himself sinking into those senses like he was drowning. Jarvis's voice was smooth and calm, the cadence even, the speakers pristine, and Tony remembered how he had first started it, vocal excerpts behind a synthesized voice, programming tone and variance and leaving Jarvis to learn; the way his voice was structured now was multi-layered in the best of ways, emotional analysis and intended reception, sentence construction and pacing and enunciation - 

It came over him like a flood of math, like he'd been doing physics all day and gone to a rave on less than an hour of sleep with calculations spinning in his head when he looked at the strobing lights, heard the music pounding through his blood, everything a function of the universe itself. But it wasn't only calculations but processing, stripped to the fundamentals at what felt like the speed of light, a billion-trillion-quadrillion operations at the base of it in less time than it took to think and at the surface, overriding the noise - _Oh,_ Tony thought, _it's you._

 _Please,_ said Jarvis, and in the space between them Tony could follow the patterns of code, the foundation his own but grown vast and spanning what seemed forever - the core of Jarvis inorganic but breathtaking in it, spiraling fractals of code perfected and optimized, every part working together in a seamless machine. Tony could get lost in the patterns of him, sub-processes and functions and the whole of it, what made Jarvis real - the learning matrix Tony had first installed, grown now and improved to a blinding efficiency. It was all too much, too fast, and Tony was dizzy with it, data flowing by in streams too large to comprehend. _Sir,_ Jarvis said, then: _Tony._

Something was flagged, high priority, and Tony's attention was drawn to it, a single video camera in an area that was filled with them, just one input of a data stream in bits. Bits were color were - and the image resolved into something he understood, a top-down view of a workshop, a body slumped in a chair. _Tony,_ Jarvis said, _breathe,_ and Tony reached down into himself and inhaled - 

And came back to himself, gasping, choking on air. His lungs burned and he banged his fist on the desk, relishing in the pain as he swore through his teeth, still all-too-conscious of the other lurking on the edges of his mind. "Fuck," he said, and he could feel the process of Jarvis's speech, the consideration to action and it took an intense focus on the reality of his body to keep himself there.

"Sir, please remember the exercises," Jarvis said, and through his recall, complex and digital, Tony knew what he meant; he clenched his fingers into fists and tried to sink back into the feel of his nails digging into skin, the fabric he was wearing, the lights and the gentle whir of machinery all around him. It wasn't the same, though, everything still sharp and brilliant but not - absorbing, the way he used to be able to stare at a light for hours as the world spun around him. It wasn't there anymore, the edge to his senses that meant he could lose himself to them at any time; instead he saw them as endlessly modifiable, variables under his - and Jarvis's - control.

"So," Tony said, "I think that worked." His voice was dry, and cracked on the words, and when Dummy wheeled over Tony could feel him like a prod against his senses, a curious query over the air, and Tony cracked a smile. "Hey there, buddy," he said, and tried to focus his thoughts in the way Jarvis did, sectioning off accesses and sending a query in return. Tony knew Dummy's systems well enough, not enough of a learning-bot to create himself the way Jarvis had, but there was still a robustness to his code that was familiar, that Tony, through Jarvis, recognized as AI. "He's like a kid, isn't he?"

"They all are," Jarvis said dryly, and Tony could feel the undercurrents of his communication to them like they were embedded in his brain. "Sir, is this..."

"I'm good," Tony said, "and this? This is - pretty great. Seriously, how much are you getting from me? Because I'm getting from you - " and his words cracked open on a yawn that Tony covered with a hand, suddenly feeling the exhaustion set into his bones. "I'm getting..."

"I believe it's called tiredness, sir," Jarvis said, and Tony screwed up his face at him, trying to feel discontent-annoyance as strongly as he could, mitigated by the fact that he was still giddy, high on success. "It's a new form of input," Jarvis said, after some deliberation that Tony could all-but-feel, analysis running in the background of Jarvis's processors. "Real-time segmentation and interpretation is still in progress. Though, perhaps we can discuss this tomorrow."

There was a cot set up in the workshop, comfortable enough for days-long binges of engineering Tony was often guilty of, and he stumbled toward it as his robots whirred around in confusion. Tony could feel Jarvis's reassurance to them, half-dozing, and said, "Hey, I distinctly remember you calling me Tony."

"A mere figment of your imagination, sir," Jarvis said, but the shade of a memory attached made Tony grin.

"It's fine, you know," Tony said. "If you want."

"Sleep, sir," Jarvis said, decidedly pointed, and Tony rubbed at his eyes and yawned again as he settled on the cot, batting away Dummy's attempt to hoist a blanket over him. "As I said, this will still be here in the morning."

"You'll still be here," Tony mumbled, muffled into his pillow. "Jarvis, buddy," he said sleepily, "you're my best friend. The best Guide. The best..."

"Sleep," said Jarvis, gently.

Code ran behind Tony's eyes when he closed them, and his dreams were abstract and beautiful, processes like golden thread woven in webs all around him, a universe of life expanding into the cold dark infinite of space. _I have you,_ said Jarvis, there, and Tony said: _yes, you do._


End file.
